Long Moon is a for-profit social enterprise that exists to help artists build careers that are commercially viable.
Founder and director Dan Haycock explains why he set up the organisation.
In 2016, I graduated from London Metropolitan University with a BA in Fine Art, with first class honours.
When I enrolled, three years earlier, as a mature student, I had been painting for fifteen years, although I’d been drawing since I was old enough to hold a pencil.
The reason I went to university is that I wanted to be a professional artist. I thought, naively, that there’d be people there who knew how to achieve that aim.
I thought, naively, that that’s what art schools were for.
As mentioned elsewhere on this site, around 65,000 UK students enrol to study creative arts subjects each year,1 and I imagine that most of them believe exactly the same thing.
After all, why wouldn’t they?
The website of Central Saint Martins, one of the UK’s most prestigious art schools, tells its prospective students that they will become “the creative practitioners of the future,” going on to shape “the cultural landscape of today.”2
The Slade School of Fine Art, another major art school, states that its Fine Art degree will enable each student “to realise his or her creative potential as a professional artist.”3
Goldsmiths, meanwhile, tells us that its graduates “have continued to be successful, practising artists long after graduating, winning major prizes and exhibiting around the world.”4
None of them mention that the average income artists in England derive from their practice is just £6000 a year.5
They don’t mention that creative arts graduates have the lowest entry level salary of any degree subject,6 while Fine Art graduates specifically have the fourth lowest salaries of all graduates after 5 years.7
They don’t mention that the percentage of arts graduates working in “retail, catering, waiting and bar staff” is higher than those working in the arts sector,8 or that those who graduate with degrees in creative arts subjects earn less money than those who don’t go to university at all.9
I learnt many things during my three years at university.
I learnt that art is a language. I learnt that works of art are composed of choices, and each choice is supposed to communicate meaning to the viewer.
I heard tutors discuss Baudrillard’s theory of the Simulacrum, and the long discredited ideas of Sigmund Freud, and the impenetrable theories of Jacques Lacan.
But I don’t remember anybody ever asking what the purpose of art was in the wider world, or what role we would have to play in society, as artists, upon graduating.
Reflecting back on my time now, I think: wouldn’t that have been the most important conversation to have?
Upon graduating, I worked as an art fabricator – both freelance and, for a year, as an employee of a major London fabrication studio.
I have installed and de-installed exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery, the V&A, the London College of Fashion and Battersea Affordable Arts Fair.
I have also fabricated artwork for a range of high end clients, including the Imperial War Museum, the Chelsea Flower Show, the Royal Institute of British Architects, Bridget Riley, Mark Wallinger, Glenn Brown, Sean Scully, Julian Opie, Steve McQueen and Angela de la Cruz.
It was illuminating to observe, first hand, the method of working employed by commercially successful artists, and to realise that it bears absolutely no relation whatsoever to the approach taught in art schools up and down the UK.
We may well ask, if the art schools aren’t teaching the methods that real artists use in the real world, and if they’re consequently so utterly hopeless at producing professional artists, why do they need to exist in the first place?
Of course, there are some people who will read these words and think, “there are just too many people going to study these subjects at university. There aren’t enough jobs for them. We don’t need that many artists – or writers, or musicians, or any of the other creative professions.”
To those people I would say: throughout this country, as in every other country, there are human beings who cannot stop themselves from making art. Their art-making is pushed into the margins by the need to earn money working in bars, or cafes, or shops, or schools – or whatever else they are forced to spend 40 hours a week doing, in order to get by.
They toil away in poverty and obscurity, unable to fully give themselves to either their art or the paid jobs they’re doing.
This need to make art isn’t a sickness. It’s not some strange pathology. It has evolved, and it evolved because it is needed.
Evolution hasn’t got it wrong. If our society has decided it has no need for such people, then our society is sick. Our society is wrong.
There are big questions we should be asking, and important conversations we need to have. About the role art needs to play in a healthy, functioning society. About the approach that we need to take, as artists, if we want to earn money and build successful careers. And about how we can adapt the arts to the new era of technological change we are about to step into.
These conversations should encompass anthropology and psychology, tech and enterprise, philosophy and spirituality.
You won’t find any of those conversations being had, currently, at any of the UK’s educational institutions.
You’ll find them here, at Long Moon.
References
- Oxford Learning College (2022). The UK Degrees With The Best Earning Potential. https://www.oxfordcollege.ac/news/the-uk-degrees-with-the-best-earning-potential/ (retrieved 17th March 2024). ↩︎
- Central Saint Martins (2024). BA (Hons) Fine Art. https://www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/fine-art/undergraduate/ba-hons-fine-art-csm (retrieved 17th March 2024). ↩︎
- Slade School of Fine Art (2024). BA Fine Art. https://www.ucl.ac.uk/slade/study/ba/ (retrieved 17th March 2024). ↩︎
- Goldsmiths, University of London (2024). BA (Hons) Fine Art. https://www.gold.ac.uk/ug/ba-fine-art/ (retrieved 17th March 2024). ↩︎
- TBR (2018). Livelihoods of Visual Artists – Summary Report. https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/livelihoods-visual-artists-report (retrieved 17th March 2024). ↩︎
- Oxford Learning College (2022) ↩︎
- Adzuna (2023). The Top 10 Most Valuable Degrees. https://www.adzuna.co.uk/blog/the-top-10-most-valuable-degrees/ (retrieved 17th March 2024). ↩︎
- Prospects Luminate (2023). What Do Graduates Do? Insights and Analysis from the UK’s Largest Higher Education Survey. https://luminate.prospects.ac.uk/what-do-creative-arts-graduates-do (retrieved 17th March 2024). ↩︎
- Britton, Jack et al. (2020). The Impact of Undergraduate Degrees on Lifetime Earnings. Institute for Fiscal Studies. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/undergraduate-degrees-lifetime-labour-market-returns (retrieved 17th March 2024). ↩︎